Stephenie Wight 🌸 (@SKWpinky)

Why is paganism Hated? 👇🏻 Hate is taught and indoctrinated so when someone hates it is a learned behavior. The main hate I see for pagans and paganism comes from those who follow organized religions. Organized religions have set rules and practices that someone is taught/indoctrinated to follow. When someone does not follow those teachings, they are punished. Even questioning the validity or logic of the teachings can be met with admonishment. I was brought up being taught Catholic beliefs however I questioned very early those teachings. I honestly wanted to know and not simply believe what I was being told. Questioning was not acceptable from a religious perspective and believing in something without question was unacceptable for me so I turned to the source of what I was being told. I started by reading our family Bible when I was 8 y/o. The more I read and re-read over a couple years, the more I found contradictions and things that simply did not make sense. Still I did want to be a good Catholic so I questioned. The answers were often that ‘you just have to believe’. I was also informed that people were not intelligent enough to understand what scripture meant and that is why they need the priest to tell them what it means. This made no sense to me. If people were not intelligent enough to understand and the preist is a person, he is not enough to understand and therefore is not qualified to be telling me what scripture means. I admitted that most of the preists I had spoken to seemed to be of average intelligence which also put them at a disadvantage being that I had been tested and found to have a genius IQ and maybe I should be the one helping them to understand what they are teaching. My response was not taken very well but by that time I had become frustrated and antagonistic. I read and listened only to see people who were supposed to be Christians violating what they claimed were their beliefs. I attended various denominational churches, each claiming that their way was the correct way of having a relationship with the God. One question that really got me in trouble was when I questioned what kind of sick mind does something like is stated in Genesis 22:2 Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, whom you love--Isaac--and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you." I know he was stopped before he murdered his son but the reasoning for the action remains, Gen 22:12 "Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son." Fear God, the same God I had been told loves everyone? Is causing mental torture love? If Isaac loved his son, this had to be cruel and cause extreme anguish. To me the God of the Bible was comparable to sect leaders such as Charles Manson or Jim Jones, which were in the new as I was growing up. I had experiences with seeing and talking with what had been considered a ‘fantasy friend’ when I was between 5 -7 years old that was later found to look exactly like the old woman that had owned the house years earlier as well as other unexplained experiences so I believed that there was more than simply a physical life and when someone dies they become worm food so I began learning about and studying other, non-Abrahamic, beliefs, spirituality and practices. I wanted to know and the only way I could do that was to participate and experience. I was fortunate that I met a shaman who was willing to work with me and teach me even though I am not of his culture. He also supported that I continue to learn from and about many paths because he said that my path is different than his and although I may practice what I learned from him, it is not my culture so I would not be accepted by others of the culture. At this same time I was looking toward my future and what I wanted to do as a job as well. I tended toward psychology and by the time I was 15 I had read every psychology book in our public library at least once. In business, advertising and investments also attracted my interest so I also studied them. Politics was not very interesting at that time but how politicians manipulated people by what and how things were presented was. I also started to learn hypnosis at that time and was successful in hypnotizing my first subject when I was 15. All this time I was still going along with playing Christian. I actually started enjoying the way I saw people being manipulated, even though I was opposed to such manipulation. I could use going to church and paying attention to learn. I listened to the lies that were being told about other beliefs and knew these were lies because I had studied and experienced them first hand. I could watch the way the congregation would accept whatever they were being told. It made sense that the clergy was referred to as the shepherd and the congregation was their flock, they followed like sheep.